“Okay, Lord, I hear you”: Darlene Sowell and CHHSM

Darlene Sowell’s life changed one day while she was watching Rosie O’Donnell.

It’s not what you think. The show wasn’t touting a self-help strategy or the latest exercise fad. Sowell was watching Rosie when a headhunter called, and that’s what led her to health and human service ministry and the congregation of CHHSM.

That headhunter convinced her to have a job interview with Tom Vanden Berk, president and chief executive officer of UCAN, a CHHSM ministry in Chicago that works with more than 13,000 children each year. “When I met Tom,” recalls Sowell, a member of Trinity UCC in Chicago, “he talked first about mission and his commitment to kids.” She also met Zack Schrantz, then development director and now COO, who told her that UCAN was a UCC ministry.

“Okay, Lord. I hear you,” Sowell remembers saying. “I knew it was right before I left that day.”

Sowell joined UCAN in 1996 and stayed twelve years, first as vice president for human resources and then as executive vice president for human resources, facilities and housing programs. During that time, she became a CHHSM board member and Tom Vanden Berk became her mentor and friend. One day in 2008, after the two had agreed it was time for her to begin looking for a more senior position, he suggested that she interview at another CHHSM ministry as a way to build her career skills.

That skill-building exercise led Sowell to become executive director of CHHSM member Neighborhood Houses in St. Louis. Although the change meant moving 300 miles and assuming new responsibilities, she says, “My CHHSM relationships made the transition easy. I couldn’t have done it without them.”

Since Sowell arrived in St. Louis, CHHSM president and CEO Bryan Sickbert has provided support and training for the Neighborhood Houses board, while her CHHSM colleagues and fellow Diakonal ministers Chris Cox, Mike Brennan and Greg Cardwell-Copenhefer are peers always ready with help and advice. Jerry Paul, president of the Deaconess Foundation in St. Louis “has been supportive personally and professionally,” she says, and the foundation”s capacity building program has increased Neighborhood Houses” ability to assess its needs and respond to changing economic and social service conditions.

The support from CHHSM”s congregation is amplified by the investment of the United Church of Christ in Sowel”s new ministry. “The church support here is unlike anything I”ve ever seen,” she says, praising especially the St. Louis Association and the Missouri Mid-South Conference of the UCC.

Using this help, Sowell hopes that Neighborhood Houses will move families and communities to self-sufficiency, foster the arts and healthy food in urban neighborhoods, and offer excellent early childhood education. “We have much of what we need in place to do wonderful things,” she says of Neighborhood Houses. “It’s where I’m supposed to be. I firmly believe that. It came together, instantly.”

New Research on Foster Teen Pregnancy Prevention from CHHSM Member UCAN

There’s good news in the work to prevent teen pregnancy: according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, teen pregnancy and birth rates in the United States have declined by approximately one-third over the past decade. However, there’s also much more to be done: one-third of girls in the United States still become pregnant as teenagers, and the United States still has the highest teen pregnancy and birth rates in the fully industrialized world.

Recently, The National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy and CHHSM member UCAN (Uhlich Children’s Advantage Network of Chicago) collaborated on an initiative to reduce teen pregnancy among one population at especially high risk: youth in foster care. The two organizations conducted qualitative research including focus groups with foster teens and foster parents, a survey of Chicago-area child welfare service providers, and meetings with child welfare and teen pregnancy prevention organizations in Chicago and Washington D.C.. Their findings suggest new ways to reduce teen pregnancy among foster teens by encouraging positive, respectful relationships and peer support among young people and strengthening foster teens relationships with supportive, consistent adults.

The report notes that preventing pregnancy among foster teens can be particularly complicated because many of these young women, despite access to information about preventing pregnancy, want to have a child in order to experience having families of their own. Learning from peers about the real-life complications of teen parenting can help counteract these motivations, while education and youth development activities can help supply foster teens with positive adult role models and avenues for success outside of early parenting. Mental health services, work with boys and young men and more training for foster parents also provide strategies for preventing foster teen pregnancy.

What’s next in UCAN’s work with foster teens? Its project with the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy continues, with work to make pregnancy prevention for foster youth a higher priority, developing and piloting a pregnancy prevention program for foster teens in Chicago, and providing tools for preventing pregnancy to foster teens and those who care for them.

Founded in 1869, UCAN (Uhlich Children’s Advantage Network) was established by St. Paul’s German Evangelical Lutheran Church (known today as St. Paul’s UCC, Chicago) to care for Civil War orphans. Today’s UCAN offers a full array of services for children and families through a network of community-based initiatives. To learn more about UCAN’s work in teen pregnancy prevention, read

“Fostering Hope: Preventing Teen Pregnancy Among Youth in Foster Care” at www.teenpregnancy.org; to learn more about UCAN, please visit www.ucanchicao.org.